


Smiles

by thegeekypoet



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben needs a holiday, F/M, Fluff, I wrote this before TROS happend, Leia needs a holiday, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rose Tico has a lot of crushes and honestly same, and not much else, but I don't think that's too much of a problem, everyone needs a holiday, let's stop pretending that I actually know what I do, make a movie about that disney, or rather a character study, sooo Not Canon Compliant, stormpilot if you squint real hard, that's not how cloaked binary beacons work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegeekypoet/pseuds/thegeekypoet
Summary: A survivior's smile,a traitor's smile,a concerned leader's smile,a kind smile,a fallen son's smileand one of a fighter as well.aka a tiny tale told through (you guessed it) smiles.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Smiles

**Author's Note:**

> If you celebrate it: A wonderful and merry Christmas to you. If not: here is some fluff I wrote before TROS (if you want it).  
> Warning: This probably does not do Ben Solo's smile in the movie justice. (But then again, what really does?)

Rey’s smile is broad and dazzling, like a sunny day. It lights up the whole room.

When she smiles it makes the darkness clouding your heart go away and you forget your worries for a moment.

She smiles easily around everyone, but there is something off about that smile, it rather feels like armor, strengthened and made more convincing over the years. Nobody distrusts a little, slim girl that smiles easily at you. But before you know what comes to pass, you are already knocked out by one end of her staff. Her smile is just another tool in her box of survival skills, another weapon forged by a girl left for the dunes to swallow, a girl that did not go down the desserts throat quite as easily as suspected. But that is not her real smile, it has never been.

It is reserved, as a reply for Finn’s grimaces at meetings, because he hates all the talking that results in no doing and Poe’s terrible jokes that really should not make you crack up, but they do, (his General Hux impression is supposed to be quiet good, although Rey has never really met the man responsible for Starkiller Base). And it is reserved for mechanic talk with Rose about wires and conductors, that makes everyone that catches them talking roll their eyes. It is there for the happy quiet moments with her found family and the reassuring of a soulmate, of whom she once thought of as an enemy.

And it also has sadder counterpart for hard fought victories and a general that seems to have lost it all. It can be sympathetic for pilots who mourn the rest of their squadron and for a self-proclaimed monster breaking down at night and sobbing on her shoulder although he is light years away.

It says everything will be ok somehow in those moments too, it is hope and forgiveness and _light_.

A survivor’s smile and one of a fighter as well.

Finn’s smile is warm and honest. It feels like a hug, like comfort, like home.

When he smiles it makes you trust him in an instant, which can be a very good thing, if you are in search of a new friend and also a very bad thing, if you have secrets to keep.

He smiles at almost everyone and sometimes it seems like he is trying to make up for a time in which there was not much to smile about, sometimes all his instant happiness is only there to gloss over a more shadowy past. There is a difference there though, you can see it in his eyes only when you know where to look for it. They do not crinkle as much when he is lost in thoughts of what once has been, or at least that is what Poe declared one evening, when he sat together with the people that matter most.

The people his eyes not just crinkle but shine for. Even now with moral low, they make it work and Poe tells stupid jokes and the story about _„that one time, you remember, that one time, I think i have never mentioned it before, where I escaped in a first order tie fighter from what seemed to be certain death. Straight through the fingers of Kylo Ren.“_ They always laugh at his dramatic retellings of how he met Finn, but Rey’s is always a bit shallow, always a bit too stiff.

Finn then sends her his reassuring smile, because he always remembers that she, too had been captured by him, tortured as far as he and Poe know, for the same information. He sends her his war smile, the same he gives Poe, when he is off to another battle or Rose, when she tells him stories of her sister.

It tells you that you have got his and that you will make it work, it is confidence and trust and hope.

A traitor’s smile and one of a fighter as well.

Poe’s smile is huge and dashing, almost a grin. Gums and teeth exposed. It is all consuming and there is nothing that prepares you for it.

When he smiles it feels like a storm rushing over you in the best way possible. A good mood striking you like lightning.

He smiles at a lot of people, in a lot of different ways and it is always a true smile for everyone. There is his pilot’s smile, that makes a lot of girls giggle, and some mechanic boys blush, although Rose never tells him this. _„Would only help his ego“_ , she says to Rey in whispers, _„and we really don’t want that to get any bigger.“_ But Poe seemingly has a lot to smile about, some call him _the golden boy of the resistance, its best pilot for sure, Leia’s favorite, a great leader in the making_. For those people he has his hero smile, because that is what the people want him to be in moments like this.

You can witness his broadest smile mostly when he is with an Ex-Stormtrooper, a mechanic and a once scavenger turned Jedi, who he thinks makes a far better hero than himself. He really just likes flying, because it reminds him of his parents and of the beginning of an unlikely friendship, of which he likes to tell the story again and again.

He also has a forced smile, although you don’t see it often. But it is there when the topic of his torture at the hands of the First Order comes up and it is there when one evening Rey tells him about what happened to her, when she was captured. Poe and Rey were never the closest in their awkward but somehow family like quartet. They did not seem to fit together quite as nicely as him and Finn, both determined to fight against the darkness that comes with the First Order on the rise, or as him and Rose discussing ship parts and talking over the newest X-Wing models. Some joke that it must be, because he rather adores his ship than the ones that adore him and Rey used to rip hundreds of different ones apart for a living. Sometimes he see’s her staring at his fighter, calculating how many days it could have fed her, he does not know what to say to her in moments like this.

It is a fake smile, that tells you that he suspects something and that there is something off about the current situation.

A concerned leader’s smile and one of a fighter as well.

Rose’s smile is shy at first, but broadens with time, it makes you feel like you have earned it.

When she smiles it is with all her heart, broken many times, but still beating, still going, here to fight another day, to fight the fight her sister gave everything for.

There are not a lot of people to witness it, she is mostly occupied behind pipes all day. „Pae-Pae was the fighter of us two.“, she tells Rey one day, when the pilots and gunners and soldiers of their cruiser are away to carry out another mission. Rose likes days like these and she likes Rey, she understands why Finn was crushing on her in the beginning, before he and Poe formed whatever bond they formed, which she does not really understand. They all have not really talked about her kissing Finn and Poe liking Finn and her kinda crushing on Rey for a bit after Poe and Finn went away on another mission. It is all a bit messy and Rose does not like detangling messes so she just lets it rest for the moment until the war is over and there is enough time for relationships and attaching labels to things. Nonetheless she likes Rey, although she first really thought she would not. She seemed too above this mess of soldiers and mechanics, she heard whispers how she had fought Kylo Ren and how she trained with Luke Skywalker before Crait happened.

So she smiles often when they are talking about conductors and wires, because Rey rather likes to talk about mechanics than about how the construction of her lightsaber goes and they are both not the people-loving-type like Poe and Finn are. That is maybe what makes their group work so well, they balance each other out.

She also has the most understanding smile, when Finn tells her what he witnessed during his time with the First Order or when Poe talks about the guilt of losing the bomber squad her sister was a part of, about the guilt of losing any lives in his attacks. She also gives it to Rey, especially to Rey, because she knows what it means to feels alone and also because she does not know what else she has to do when she comes to her one night after the four of them sat together for way longer then they should and tells her about the person she has fallen in love with, because Rose knows what it means to desperately love and losing that loved one. She tries to be understanding when Rey tells her that she has to go to save him, because otherwise she will lose him for ever. Rose asks her no questions only gives her her an understanding smile and squeezes her hand as if to say it is ok. „His name is Ben.“, Rey says none the less. „And he has made a lot of mistakes.“

It is not an uplifting smile, but one that promises secrecy, because Rose does know who Ben really is, a secret Poe was only told because Leia took him under her wing and she thought the story of her fallen son was safe with him. But Poe had told both her and Finn, in whispers because _have you noticed something is off with Rey? I think I know why._

It is a secret smile, Rose knows, because when Poe comes to her the next morning she does not tell.

A kind smile and one of a fighter as well.

Kylo Ren does not smile.

But Ben Solo does.

It is small and quiet and if you do not look for it you will not notice it, but Rey knows where to search.

She saw him smile for the first time, when she was foolish enough to enter the lion’s den and expected he would leave with her.

And they both were sure that it would be the only occasion. It was, it _is_ , war after all. And there is no room for a childish fantasy of belonging when you are filled with the want for revenge, when there is a resistance to be crushed.

But still they were children. Young and naive and desperate for something to cling to, when the galaxy was falling apart and so they found themselves clinging to each other again and again and again. And then somewhere between a burning throne room and the starlit sky of some outer rim planet they both grew up.

Rey knew that Poe was probably suspicious and that Rose could tell him and Finn, but the moment her eyes locked with his across the field, they had both landed on, she realized that she did not care about their ideas of wrong and right. She was here without a plan maybe, but it was not like they planned defeating the Praetorian Guards either, it just had happened, so whatever obstacle would cross their path now, they would make it through.

They both did not recognize when they started running towards the other, but suddenly they are in each others arms and maybe they both hold on a bit too tightly and Ben smiles a bit too broadly into Reys shoulder, because although she does not move her head to look at his face, he knows that she feels it and holds her just a little bit tighter. „I didn’t expect you would really come.“, he murmurs. she pulls back and her eyes are so earnest, it almost hurts: „Why wouldn’t I?“ _Because they never did,_ he wants to say, but the words stay in his mind, not that she would not hear them there any less than if he spoke them out loud. „Your father did.“, she says softly, smiling up at him. „Yes he did.“, he agrees quietly.

He smiles a fallen son's smile and one of a fighter as well.

General Leia Organa is sure that she has forgotten how to truly smile. Too many losses and defeats over the years have made her weary. But then right in the middle of Poe’s monolog about why he thinks that Rey decided to run away with her son, the enemy, the light of her cloaked binary beacon fades, indicating that it’s counterpart had been destroyed, and Leia has to bite back the grin that wants to overtake her face. She ushers Poe out after what feels like an eternity and tells him that maybe he should talk to Rose or Finn about the matter. Only then she allows the smile to spread on her face and the tears to run down her cheeks, because Rey had destroyed her beacon, which meant she had found him, which meant her son was finally free.


End file.
